


inside out in your hands

by tabris



Series: this unlikely story of us [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bathing/Washing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 07:00:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8614183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabris/pseuds/tabris
Summary: "Steve!" Bucky shouts hoarsely, loathe to leave the shower just yet.
A moment later Steve comes skidding in, catching himself on the metal doorframe, eyes wide with alarm.
"Don't give me that face, goof," Bucky says, grinning. This face he can work with. He lifts his arm just to the point of discomfort, letting it show for once. "Could use an assist here."





	

**Author's Note:**

> many thanks to bloodmooninspace at the steter discord for making this way better. all remaining mistakes and typos are mine. (:
> 
> hurt/comfort bingo: wild card

Wakandan showers are one of this brave new world's best inventions, Bucky decides.

It's bigger than the bedroom in the place he and Steve shared before the war, open to the rest of the room with only the gradually sloping floor to keep the water in. Large stones tile the walls, faint silvery veins threaded through warm grey. An array of novel and earthy scented soaps sits in a niche under the controls in the wall opposite the entry. A low slung bench runs along one of the side walls, just out of the spray.

And that spray is the best part of the whole thing — infinitely controllable and defaulting to a warm, diffuse downpour that reminds Bucky of summer storms spent running down sidewalks and not even a little bit of being hosed down with icy jets like an animal. 

After several minutes standing in the glorious warmth just because he can, Bucky lifts his right arm to push his hair out of his face and winces when it tugs at the stitches under the waterproof bandages swathed up and around his left shoulder and collarbone.

T'Challa's doctors had advised him to stay in bed for another week to let the anchors for the new arm heal but a high tech hospital is still a hospital. The thought of a single more night in one made Bucky grind his teeth until Steve had stepped in and offered to keep an eye on him.

He could push through it; god knows he has before. Except now there's Steve. Steve, who would take one look at him, figure it out, then give him that sad face Bucky doesn't think he's ever been immune to. He does not want to deal with that face tonight, not when everything else has been going better than it has in, well. Decades.

"Steve!" he shouts hoarsely, loathe to leave the shower just yet.

A moment later Steve comes skidding in, catching himself on the metal doorframe, eyes wide with alarm.

"Don't give me that face, goof," Bucky says, grinning. This face he can work with. He lifts his arm just to the point of discomfort, letting it show for once. "Could use an assist here."

In response Steve starts stripping out of his own clothes and tosses them beside the robe thing Bucky had been wearing all day on the bench. Bucky watches; he can't not. Not when Steve is right there. They had lived in each other's pockets for years, in Brooklyn and later all over Europe, but those memories are hazy and scattered. Now he's making new ones, bright and sharp, ones to keep.

Steve hopping on one foot fighting with snug modern day denim is definitely one to keep.

Even better, he no longer has to hide his interest in the gradual reveal of Steve's unmarked skin. It makes Steve blush, but he walks over to join Bucky in the shower without shame and does some unsubtle looking of his own.

"It's okay to need help, you know. God knows you cleaned me up enough when we were kids," Steve says as he reaches around Bucky to pick up a cloth and soap from the little niche in the wall.

"Yeah, yeah. Too bad I can't send you back in time to tell yourself that."

A moment later he puts the soap back and Bucky feels soft cotton against his right shoulder. It takes everything in him not to flinch, not to make Steve worry, but god it's been so long since anyone's touched him with anything other than cruelty or clinical detachment that he doesn't quite know to process it.

The banter helps, feels natural. And yet there's something about being physically naked that seems to inspire other sorts of openness. Steve standing behind him and unable to see his face doesn't hurt.

Steve pauses for a moment and Bucky can feel him shrug before continuing to run the cloth down his arm. "So I might have had a few things to prove."

"Never to me."

It's quiet for a moment, then Steve's lips brush Bucky's shoulder so quick and soft he might be imagining it.

"I get that. Now, at least. Better late than never?"

"A few decades late, jerk," Bucky says and Steve laughs, the sound echoing around the cascading water, rueful but genuine.

It's one of Bucky's favorite sounds. Always has been he thinks, and it settles something inside him, lets him lean into Steve's touch for no reason other than it feels nice and that he wants to. The scent of the soap curls up around them, creamy and green smelling, and if he turns his head just a little Steve's right there under all of it.

Slowly, gradually, hurt and worry wash down the drain and Bucky's left marveling at every touch, long forgotten and shiny new, both. Steve is careful to avoid dislodging the bandages; everywhere else he is meticulously consistent, skimming smooth skin and knotted scar tissue with equal devotion.

The air shifts as Steve moves and it occurs to Bucky that he's closed his eyes somewhere along the way. It's good though, the darkness behind his lids amplifying all of his other senses.

"Give me your hand," Steve murmurs, barely audible from somewhere in front of and below him.

Bucky reaches out automatically towards his voice, thumb brushing Steve's cheek before Steve takes his hand and redirects it to his shoulder.

"Here, bend your knee," he says, and waits until Bucky's balanced himself before gently lifting his foot to rest it on his own knee.

He can't keep his eyes closed for this part, he _can't_ , and yeah, when he peeks he's glad he did. Kneeling before him, Steve's wearing a soft smile of deep contentment as he reverently washes Bucky's foot, ankle, calf, knee, thigh, before he guides his foot back to the tile. He taps Bucky's other ankle and repeats the process, glancing upwards as he wraps the cloth behind Bucky's knee.

Some lost fragment of Bucky's memory twists at the blasphemy of it all — the assassin and the saint on his knees. But they've both risen from the dead and Steve's never been as good as everyone wanted him to be anyways.

It's an easy slide to cup Steve's face in his hand, and as Bucky drags his thumb across Steve's cheekbone it's Steve who closes his eyes, turns into the touch, and sighs deeply against Bucky's wrist. When Bucky tugs upwards he unfurls right into Bucky's space, just a breath between them when Bucky kisses him, sweet and simple.

"Good?" Steve asks.

Bucky nods. "Yeah. You can keep going."

"'kay," Steve says, then drops a kiss on the tip of Bucky's wet nose that makes Bucky startle and pull a face that has Steve grinning.

"Oh shut up."

"You're not the boss of me."

Bucky snorts.

"God help whoever is."

And Steve just laughs that same rueful thing that pulls all of Bucky's feelings into warm little knots. 

Shaking his head, Bucky closes the rest of the distance, tucking his face into the curve of Steve's neck and resting his hand on his hip, fingers splayed. "I wonder how long the hot water lasts in this place."

"Forever probably," Steve says. "I'll stay as long as you want me to."

He doesn't just mean now, Bucky knows, but he doesn't say anything, just stays there dozing off in the circle of Steve's arms, warm and comfortable.

After some time Steve seems to remember what he was doing. He adds more soap to the cloth and, somehow without dislodging Bucky from where he's half-asleep on his shoulder, finishes washing the tops of Bucky's thighs and the curve of his ass, tilts him to reach his balls and soft cock. By the time he sets the cloth to the side Bucky's practically purring with sleepy contentment.

A memory washes over him, good this time — a stray tom cat on the fire escape, summer of '39, took him two weeks to figure out Steve was feeding the damn thing. 

"Hey, wake up Buck. Need to get your hair," Steve says, mouth wet at Bucky's ear, and Bucky complies wordlessly, lets Steve turn him into the water to soak his head and stays put when Steve shifts behind him with a palm full of shampoo.

At first he thinks there's something in it causing tingles to radiate from where Steve's lathering him up. Then Steve digs his fingers in just a little at his nape and Bucky sucks in a wet gasp. There are stars behind his eyelids and one by one, with every drag of Steve's fingertips, they go supernova. It feels like Steve's touching him everywhere all at once, leaving every nerve singing.

Distantly, Bucky realizes his cock is filling, thickening at each touch. _Huh_ , he thinks, but it doesn't hold a candle to how the rest of him feels. At least not until Steve slides against him while tilting Bucky's head back to rinse the shampoo out.

Bucky moans, can't stop himself.

"Sorry, I—"

"It's okay," Bucky says, distracted, more annoyed at the pause than anything else.

"No it's not, I. I wasn't trying to— That's not what this is about," Steve responds.

Bucky opens his eyes to search Steve's face, all pink cheeks and a determined expression Bucky just wants to make _go away_. Peggy was right about Steve and his drama.

"Not complaining here," Bucky says, quirking his mouth into something he vaguely remembers as a flirty smile.

"It's—" Steve stops, purses his lips for a second, then continues. "I don't want you to feel like that's all I want or that I'm taking advantage of you."

"Christ, Steve, you got a guilt complex bigger than the Statue of Liberty." Bucky rolls his eyes. "I want this, _you_. You've never taken advantage of anyone a day in your life. I trust you, always have, always will."

Steve pauses, swallows, deflects. "It's not nice to call a dame fat, Bucky."

"Ha. I mean it. I, uh," he stalls out and twists to avoid looking into those stupidly blue eyes, suddenly hesitant. But if it'll quell Steve's guilt it's worth forcing it out. And he'd _really_ like for Steve to keep going. "I wasn't all that sure I'd ever get it up again. It's, um, good to know the pipes still work."

Steve is very still, then seemingly helpless, snickers against Bucky's shoulder. It _tickles._ There's no stopping the little bubble of laughter that escapes, buoyed on relief and hope enough for Bucky to lean back, knowing without a doubt Steve will take his weight.

"Now get your hands back on me jerk, I was enjoying that."

"Yes sir, Sergeant," he answers, still laughing.

Finally, gloriously, Steve's hands are back and with purpose, tentative at first but growing surer by the second as Bucky relaxes in Steve's arms and lets his head roll back, leaving himself open, vulnerable, trusting.

It takes his breath away just how much he _wants_. Wants to be his own person, control his own fate, put his life in Steve Rogers' capable hands for however long it might last.

Steve starts at his ribcage, Bucky's heart between his hands, his lungs, all the squishy parts of him he'd hand over to Steve in a bloody heap if he ever thought to ask. The symbolism isn't lost on Bucky as Steve brings his palms around to drag down his abdomen then out to his hips. Steve's fingertips trail down the line of muscle there and Bucky moans, can't help rolling his hips into the feeling.

Behind him, Steve freezes but can't stop his dick twitching in response. It's nearly automatic to grasp at his thigh to keep him from retreating. 

"So help me if the words 'taking advantage' fall outta that mouth one more time I'll give you something to put in it."

And yeah, that's an empty threat for the moment — Bucky's not quite ready for that and Steve sure as hell isn't — but it's a _very_ pretty thought for later and certainly has the desired effect. Steve stays put, grip tight, and lets out a soft little moan of his own right against Bucky's ear. 

With permission offered Steve takes it and runs, his hands following a path that takes them everywhere — down Bucky's arm, between his fingers, around his wrist, back up Bucky's spine and across his shoulder blades, across his pecs to brush his nipples — every touch sending him higher and higher, Steve's hands even hotter than the water raining down on them.

Finally, _finally_ , he reaches lower, loosely circling Bucky's dick in one hand and cupping his balls in the other. Steve's own cock is hard against Bucky's cleft and his mouth is open on Bucky's throat, breathing rough and _right there_ , and Bucky desperately wants this to last forever but Steve is a shaking wall of want behind him, so Bucky reaches up to anchor himself with a palm behind Steve's head and lets himself fly apart.

He comes to with Steve's quietly moaning his name over and over again, a twinge across his shoulders, and his knees refusing to hold him upright any longer. It's only thanks to Steve that he doesn't faceplant into the wall. Careful of the bandages even though Bucky can see, _feel_ him still shaking, Steve lowers him into the bench where Bucky sprawls, boneless and more relaxed than he's ever been in his life, the tile cool against his oversensitive skin.

Bucky curls his hand against the side of Steve's neck and draws him in for a slow, open kiss that makes him feel like he's coming all over again, shuddering with every slip of tongue and lips.

After what seems like forever Steve pulls back with a groan that leaves Bucky dazed but proud.

"Show me," Bucky sighs.

Steve blinks, eyes dark. "What?"

"Let me watch you. 's only fair, you've seen mine."

He's only a little surprised when Steve acquiesces, murmuring a low curse as he drops back against the opposite wall. 

Steve is a sight to behold — water beading on his skin and running in slick rivulets down his front, chest and shoulders flushed pink from the heat and darker red across his cheeks from something like embarrassment, hair stuck to his forehead in messy smudges, cock curving towards his belly and matching his cheeks where it peeks out from his fist.

And for all that his smile is still bashful under Bucky's open gaze.

It's _almost_ enough to distract Bucky, even from his own shudders that catch him by surprise every few seconds, and then Steve rolls his hips, fucking up into his fist and groaning with it, and Bucky is captivated. All that coiled power and strength laid bare and gasping before him, _for_ him.

He must make some sort of sound because Steve's looking at him questioningly for a second.

"Gorgeous, Stevie," Bucky says, unthinking and honest and more than a little drunk on _this is his life now_ , "always were."

Steve slumps against the wall, mouth fallen open. One, two, three strokes later he's coming, spilling over his hand and belly before it's washed away by the water.

Bucky reaches out, needing to touch, needing Steve at his side, now, always, forever, and Steve falls into him. The kiss he gives Bucky is little more than an open brush of lips but that's enough. Steve is in his arms and all is right with the world.


End file.
